Taking advantage of university

I was the first person from my family to go to university, and I went about it ina correspondingly rather blind and haphazard way. I've subsequently worked in HE for the best part of 9 years, and I feel like I know so many things now that I wish i could have said to my 19-year-old self with regards to taking advantage of it.

So, I'm going to list them, and then turn them into a blog, maybe.

1. I wish I'd got involved with the student paper; I actually wrote for the student paper at the university where I worked, but never the one where I studied. Stupid.

2. I never joined any societies. None at all. I always had a thing against 'clubs' when I was a kid.

3. Didn't do student radio, either. Really regret this.

4. Didn't get involved in any staff/student liaison processes. I've seen how valuable these can be.

5. Never did any RAG week stuff.

6. Despite being student rep on the board of governors at my 6th form, I completely ignored the union and potential sabbatical positions etc at university. Madness.

7. Never looked into working at the university while I was studying there; be it bar work, or temporary staff bank stuff, or graduate business placement opportunities; all really useful work experience.

I'll add more as I think of them. Please chip in with your own.

There's just so much more to do than study, and I was completely unaware of this prior to going, and when I was there, completely unaware of how to take advantage.

i'm just sorry i didn't work a lot harder tbh

That's a good and fair point.

8. Actually work!

9. Getting into a 9-5 routine would be a good thing to aid 8. I've seen mature students come to university after working careers and go about it very methodically and thoroughly; rather than not getting up until 10am and ambling in for midday, they'd be in the library for 9am and study till 5.

Really wish I'd taken more ecstasy, there was a two week period in 2003 where I took a break. Now I'm in a job and I can't take ecstasy twice a week I regret that.

i wish i'd done a bit more for the student paper - esp editing stuff - but rly, would you have wanted to do all of that? i had enough on my plate just with studying and drinking tbh.

im teaching a little in a university now

feel slightly hypocritical via i never did any work at uni [but still killed it... initially anyway]

but i would say,

1) do some fucking work. you're seriously paying all this money to fuck around?
2) get their names to sell them

9-5 treating it like a routine def key point too.

I think uni comes along too soon after secondary education for most ppl- you waste it through not having the chance to mature first, and conversely through not having a decent break from regimented routine in order to let your hair down.

That or school is ludicrously regimented. Can't believe children forced to endure such authoritarian atmospheres.

i had an inadequate grounding in the subject from school, and was too lazy to do general reading in the holidays. i just didn't give enough of a fuck and was focussed on other stuff, like student journalism and even just mainlining movies eventually. all of that proved subsequently useful and it's not really worth castigating the younger me for not getting out of bed earlier. it's a dumb phase you go through before you learn to live on <six hours' sleep.

I think the biggest thing I would change is that I wouldn't have gone at 17. There's way too much going on at that point in a person's life to take advantage of college/uni properly or at least there was for me. In retrospect I should have taken a couple years off between HS and college. Or, you know, like 10.

yep this^^ for me too. 4 years in and i'm almost mature enough

school is like prison for children tho essentially.

u went to letterfrack tho?

i do remember consciously being super happy as a fresher, so it'd be dumb to regret any of that

lol

idk college was mainly abt disillusionment to me tbh. i had high hopes. i feel like i'm finally disillusioned enough to like get it.

x-post to HM - Yeah so was I but that's because I might as well have been majoring in bong hits and making out rather than Eng Lit. I could have done that without being in school and wasting a hell of a lot of $$.

yeah, third level for me was just second level but at a slower pace and with no disciplinary enforcement. Nothing like the shiny brochure promised.

i had this idea that it was going to be full of all these cool interesting ppl but it was just secondary school w/ a diff pecking order + "experimentation" which i guess isnt a horrible thought really but still

Really wish I'd taken more ecstasy, there was a two week period in 2003 where I took a break. Now I'm in a job and I can't take ecstasy twice a week I regret that.

I think the biggest thing I would change is that I wouldn't have gone at 17. There's way too much going on at that point in a person's life to take advantage of college/uni properly or at least there was for me. In retrospect I should have taken a couple years off between HS and college. Or, you know, like 10.

^^these two for me. no fucking way was i mature enough to go to university straight out of school, wasn't prepared enough in any way (academic or otherwise). but if i was gonna do it then at least i should've probably had ~fun~ while fucking it up.

oh well at least i did the student paper stuff (which necessitated being involved with the students' union etc, though i always had contempt for those weirdos)

Lots of regrets for me - I pretty much didn't go to university when I was at university. Scraped a 2:2 so it turned out alright, but while I made some lifelong friends I'm still tight with 15 years later I didn't really gain anything but early-stage alcoholism.

Also I wouldn't have done lol psychology I'd have done something vaguely useful like computer science.

Gone further away from home. Finances/happenstance meant that I went quite locally (30 miles away). Only had 3 days of lectures a week so just drove in on those days and never spent, say a weekend, there or anything and was never there at night so didn't make any friends at all. Didn't bother me at the time but definitely didn't get any kind of lol Hollywood 'college experience'.

i was basically terrified of my professors and avoided them like the plague outside of classes. took me a while to realize this was Not The Best Approach

yeah, family situations had me leave a vaguely useful comp sys course halfway through first year. Had to stay local for the next few years where my only option was a very shitty business degree. *lyfe*

... altho i am actually kind of an expert in 'taking advantage of' my college given how many books i currently have checked out from its library!

i was basically terrified of my professors and avoided them like the plague outside of classes. took me a while to realize this was Not The Best Approach

so many lecturers and tutors who i wouldn't have ever recognised

otoh, my life has turned out ok! so it's not like i have regrets per se, our experiences are what make us &c &c

i also wish i had read Pierre Bourdieu's The Inheritors, particularly the section entitled 'Games Students Play', because it would've called me on a lot of my bullshit before i had the chance to pull it

idk college was mainly abt disillusionment to me tbh. i had high hopes. i feel like i'm finally disillusioned enough to like get it.

― plax (ico), Friday, March 11, 2011 7:34 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark

i was basically terrified of my professors and avoided them like the plague outside of classes. took me a while to realize this was Not The Best Approach

― bernard snowy, Friday, March 11, 2011 7:51 PM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark

this, basically. if I went back I think this would be the only thing I'd do differently.

I left one university after a year or so, took a year out, and did my final two years at a different one, and it was probably the best decision I ever made.

One of the main reasons behind it was that I'd been so seduced by 'OMG drinking every night' that I kind of ended up meeting the wrong people and settling into the wrong kind of student life, realised I'd left it too late to change that where I was, and that by starting elsewhere I'd get the opportunity to get more out of university. I possibly ended up doing too much - student magazine + music stuff + yeah still drinking every night took time out of work but I didn't actually fuck about THAT much. Barely any daytime TV or film watching that I can remember at all, seemed like every second of my time was accounted for.

Almost 10 years since graduating now. Really glad I'm not 10 years younger.

I wish I'd realised earlier on that drinking in halls before going out, while cheaper and often fun, is not conducive to getting laid.

Good idea for a thread. I often think about how I wasted my university years. I got the piece of paper, and I paid enough attention that I came out with the foundation of something--a certain way of looking at things, an interest in films and books and music as something more than just stuff; it's hard to define--but I spent most of my time off-campus, in record stores and going to see bands, getting drunk with friends, contemptuously making fun of all the people on campus who were involved in university life in ways that I now wish I'd been. So I understand the previous post about experiences making you who you are, and realize that all the stuff I substituted for university is why I'm where I am today and who I am today--both of which I'm more or less happy with--but I still would like to do it over again and do it right.

I think the best part of university life is the library - having access to all that knowledge at your fingertips, you can get almost any book you'd be interested in if your library is part of a big enough network. that's what I miss most about my university life, although my current job is affiliated with a library and not bad.

basically my adult life has been a complex hegelian synthesis

at university: student film criticism at cost of legitimate studies
after university: shitty jobs at cost of film criticism
then: film criticism and postgrad film studies at cost of meaningful career
then: teaching film criticism

dayo OTM about libraries. i don't know if it means i routinely blame others for failings rather than take it on myself, but i think a lot of the things that strike me as shortfalls of time at university are based on how it fell short of what i'd imagined; so i wasn't part of any societies because there hardly were any; i didn't closely align myself with my subject and throw myself into it because it wasn't that commanding an identity, to be a student who was really engaged in a career of learning, etc. university, compared to the vision i had of it (pot-hazed dorms with lopsided grateful dead posters on the wall; dropping textbooks and touching hands as you picked them up &c) was just such a small deal, minimal compared to the huge social change of living on your own, etc, working out what to do with 140 hours of free time a week (okay i did a media degree). the regrets tend to be about how you occupied buildings with awesome facilities - photo labs, computer-y-editing-rooms - that one would have to make a concerted effort to access now. the parts about not creating as vigorous an academic/studious identity as possible sorta fall at the feet of the university imo (depending on where it is, sure).

lol xp

I agree with pretty much everything on this thread. University is such a huge experience that no-one can fully take advantage of it unless they've been through it once already. Which is impossible unless you have a shit-tonne of money to finance your second go.

1. I wish I'd got involved with the student paper; I actually wrote for the student paper at the university where I worked, but never the one where I studied. Stupid.

Did this, put way too much time and effort into it for someone who didn't then become a journalist/critic/actual print designer. Should've concentrated more on the actual coursework...but it did help me get some work at the Uni in my last Summer designing promo stuff so worth it really...plus all those free CDs and gigs, took full advantage there :)

Attendence at student newspaper meetings must have atrophied in the last decade seeing as in my experience about 70% of the people turned up for the free CDs.

still got my promo of 'come with us' #swag

Interestingly Exeter's student rag, although it went biweekly about five years ago, has got really, really good in the last 3 years.

come with us surrender

In my experience the societies were full of twats, that's not just bitterness, I did actually find them to be full of the people who weren't out enjoying themselves. The college paper was terrible, really bad standard. I stopped doing drama even though I'd done loads in school cos the drama club was so kinda cliquey. Maybe it was just me but I do think I made some effort initially.

I am now sort of considering going back to uni, somehow. I have reached a point where I'm kidding myself into thinking I like journalism or feel proud of my current job, "ruining" stories written by people wit no respect for words by correcting the inaccuracies in them or toning down the wild language, or trying to make them balanced.

I would definitely work harder a second time round. School had conditioned me so much into thinking that exams were about getting the necessary grade rather than learning that I would be proud of myself for never going to a single lecture in a given subject for an entire semester and still passing.

Been thinking about doing drama or something but it's v early days.

but I was in DCU, shittest of the Dublin colleges by several furlongs. Wouldn't advise anyone to go there.

Things that I'm glad I did as an undergraduate:
worked hard and got good grades;
took challenging courses outside my area of study;
spent lots of time in the library and read a lot of books not related to coursework;
consumed stupid quantities of beer, weed, and hallucinogens;
saw as much live music as I could;
did a little work with the student paper and radio station

Things I wish someone had told me to do:
understand that no one would care about my grade point average after graduation;
get a decent part-time job;
slow down instead of finishing my degree in the minimum possible time;
do a DJ shift on the radio station;
take more risks in meeting and hanging out with people different from me;
realize that my preconceived ideas about my future studies, career, and relationships were not legally binding

I've just spent 3 hours interviewing and photographing an ancient history academic for a publication we're doing. She does research based on looking at ancient communities and applying what she finds to modern communities. A lot of stuff about place, identity, migration patterns, art, etc. Really fascinating.

So, another point: I wish I'd bothered, as an undergrad, with getting to grips with the concept of research, and the value of what my lecturers did outside of teach us, and the types of projects and activities that can happen. Rather than mocking our cultural studies guy for being proud of having done the DVD sleevenotes for Driller Killer.

wish i'd taken advantage of the international student exchange schemes. and partied more and taken more drugs. and done anything more than half-assedly float on through, really.

I didn't go until I was 26, was involved in the radio station and got my useful degree in 3.5 years. Because I worked a lot of different jobs before going to school I knew what I wanted to do and just banged my degree out. Because I was a grown-up when I went back, I didn't feel the need to cultivate a community or a social life at school, since I already had that on the outside.

^^honestly think that path would serve most people much better

don't be afraid of taking classes or doing activities that you might suck at -- it's only college.

yeah unless youve got a really phenomenal prof, lectures are a waste of time; smaller classes are almost always better in terms of actual learning/engagement w/ material/making bros with the prof

as a giver of seminars, i just think they make more sense than lectures. if you're lecturing and you can feel the room not getting it, it's easier to change the situation if you can introduce a dialogue between you (content provider) and them (consumers). most lecturers, though, just plough on with the prepared text.

the only ACTUAL advice i have about college is to think long and hard about the subject you choose for your final paper/thesis/comprehensive, because it is like 7 months of work and if you choose it in an hour before the deadline there is a good chance you will avoid thinking about it or doing work for 6 and a half of those months

So much OTM in this thread. I do often think about how I could've made more out of uni - studying and recreational. But the whole 3-year thing is such a massive part of 'what I am today', and I don't actually want things to have turned out differently. And I don't know anyone who actually did uni the way I would recommend an 18 yr old to go about it, so I don't feel too awful about it.

The absolute worst thing I did in university was go into it with an advesarial mindset: every other student (unless he/she proved otherwise to me) was either pretentious or clueless, and I had everything figured out. That's something I needed several years (and more than a few real-life failures) to get out of my system.

Also continue to work on (and be humbled by) spelling: adversarial...

i think that feeling is a sign of success in a way: it's only because of how much you grow up at university that you've got that self-knowledge and can see how you could have done better. but having got that understanding, there's no real need to go back and do it differently, except as the real-life equivalent of trying to collect all the stars in mario

loads of great stuff itt but this the best. So my answer is just - do stuff, lots of stuff and meet people, it doesn't especially matter what or who so long as you come out of it with a good degree and a pretty good idea of what you like and what you're like.

As for specifics: go abroad, that's a blast.

ha like university is the place for 'growing up'

I have chronic headaches, it kept me from doing better academically. I am embarrassed about not doing all of the reading. If I could change one thing it would have been seeking help for my health problems sooner. I thought health issues were for old people. I think I saw the doctor once during the entire time I was there.

I hated the college I went to for what it was but the more time that passes, I see that I actually got a lot out of it

First time out at just about 17 was too much too young - dope, punk rock, and a combination of wonder at the sense of entitlement in young TCD types, and fear of lecturers meant I dropped out.

Did undergrad/ postgrad/ research much later, and much better, but the first spell was still the most fun..

My daughter is currently in the same place I flunked out of, and totally involved in societies, student politics etc. and having a great time as far as I can tell.

ha like university is the place for 'growing up'

― Romford Spring (DG), Friday, March 11, 2011 6:19 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Yeah, the 'growing up' happens at the age that university also happens; let's not infer a cause/effect relationship. You can still meet awesome people and do cool things and travel abroad without attending college.

I kind of wonder what people like Natalie Portman and Rivers Cuomo could possibly get out of college.

a further sense of superiority tbf

it wasn't the hacky sack and ultimate frisbee then?

except as the real-life equivalent of trying to collect all the stars in mario.

― joe, Saturday, March 12, 2011 1:27 AM (7 hours ago) Bookmark

yoga flame for all time

Is this the 'what I regret about college' thread?

yeah i spent two years of college in a "relationship" think the wastefulness of this is so traumatic that it might be why im so dead set against relationships now

heh didn't scar me against them for life, obviously. except for with blondes.

Geographical isolation - I didn't explore outside the main campuses and town centre of the uni I was at, and certainly never investigated nearby towns. I was an hour from London and I'd hop on a train down to there at the dropmof a hat, but I never explored the countryside around Northampton or other towns.

Compartmentalisation - I kept my uni life and home life totally separate. I think it took my wedding for my best childhood friend and my best uni friends to meet. This makes me sad.

I'd been a the same school from 11 to 18, and I was a school star - I was in the youth theatre, student council, student rep on board of governors, principal student on sixth form, won regional awards for public speaking, knew all my teachers, got great GCSE results (less consistent A Levels due to booze and records), blah blah blah. But I'd been asked to do almost all of those things rather than asking, and I had absolutely no fucking idea AT ALL how to sell myself in an environment where I knew no one, had no reputation, and wasn't a star. I think that's what fucked up my university experience most.

^ still floundering in this disconnect a decade and more later

I've been at my current place of work for nearly nine years now, in various capacities, and finally feel like I've got to somewhere similar. But its taken nearly nine years!

Heh, I thought about saying this earlier but I didn't want to raise it as a tip because it basically boils down to 'pay for a better, more competitive school', unless there's some way of acquiring those skills/changing one's personality that I still haven't got down yet.

Also, re advice to put university off for a bit, I got the necessary grades a year early at school and spent the last year coasting as a sixth-former, which was an unfulfilling, unsuccessful and frankly depressing experience. I'd say that I'd've been better off doing almost anything else instead - including university a year earlier except that the really crucial things that happened later in my life wouldn't've come about that way.

I never went to my own graduation.

I skipped mine as well - the whole period was a rich experience of impostor syndrome.

Part of me regrets staying at home while I was at uni and not moving into halls.

xp same here.

Heh....

I have missed three graduations - two I had the excuse of being in a different country, but the last one, my supervisor and head of school showed up, and I didn't ......apparently, it would have been good form to tell them I'd decided not to skip a day's work, pay for robes etc.

My biggest regret is actually not staying at home and moving into residence in first year.

i showed at my grad to collect an award presented by a guy whose company i had resigned from after only four days the week previous.

My university had a radio station that was inaudible in all but about five rooms on campus.

― Matt DC, Friday, March 11, 2011 10:42 AM (3 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ha, mine too, though i did still do a 3 hour show every wednesday. eventually they figured out internet and my listeners multiplied 10-fold to ~10.

i found out that if you really nail your final year and convince them you've found your focus, second-rate grad schools will look the other way about the 3-year party hole and attendant erratic marks that preceded it, but maybe that isn't great advice

the one-year study abroad thing is such a good idea, esp if you still only have to pay tuition to your school. i sought out an exchange that was on the books but had never been done, so my university relied on me to a large extent when it came to deciding how marks should be adjusted, time off, etc. and i somehow convinced them that i should only have to write papers, not do any exams.

i also did lots of little things that were relatively simple but look good on a resume, like "publishing" (collecting and stapling together) a ~creative writing journal~ of other students' work and joining the business society so i could tag along on a trip to new york. also being a "student rep" carried with it seemingly no responsibilities?

It was pretty easy to be put in charge of things, the majority of students being lazy types with little interest or initiative - I found myself President of something-or-other on a whim once when I realised how reluctant others were to put themselves forward (this may not work at posh universities or in the US I suspect). I should probably have done more of that, and if I had more initiative myself maybe I'd have some idea how to run things today - nobody's ever shown any interest in it as part of my cv, but the skills would've been useful.

my feeling about college is that no matter how you end up doing it youll wish you had done it differently

For me I wish that I had worked a bit harder, particularly in second year when getting a scholarship that might have changed my life would have been a realistic prospect (if I had worked harder). On the other hand, maybe I worked as hard as I could.

I suppose another regret would maybe be not getting involved in some of the sporting stuff... not nasty sport like rubgy or football, but some kind of poncey sport like fencing or shooting.

i was a lol student rep, i was nominated as a prank in my absence and nobody else went for it. It was lols, i was awful and everyone hated me. i'm not a people person, but it's hard to put a positive spin on that in job interviews when they ask 'and what did you learn from that?'.

I actually ran for student rep, was elected, and was rubbish at it. That is another of my regrets.

I also wish I was better at hanging out and networking with lecturers, but that is more of a regret about my fundamental character than a regret about my time in university.

yeah unless youve got a really phenomenal prof, lectures are a waste of time;

People say this, but I do not really agree. I have always found lectures a great way of getting an overview of a subject. Certainly a lot better than, say, sitting in the library and reading for an equivalent length of time. Though obv. you need to do a lot of reading to get the deep knowledge.

I think the biggest thing I would change is that I wouldn't have gone at 17. ... In retrospect I should have taken a couple years off between HS and college.

Yeah I should have taken at least 5 years off to grow up and learn to be a person. I was still in "child being disciplined" mode, and shirked my work out of scorn for the Authorities who I felt forced me to Do Things -- basically I was happy to be out of my hometown but otherwise I didn't want to be there.

I would NEVER have actually taken time off, though, because high achievers didn't do that: my scholarships and my family's approval and everything in my future was shown as being dependent on going directly to a "good" school. I didn't have any personal goals other than that, or nothing that didn't seem like a total fantasy.

I guess the only thing I really regret about college is a few courses I wish I'd taken, like studio art or narrative psychology or any number of history courses. Probably could've done one of those instead of ethics or epistemology, which I only took because I was determined my senior year to get a second minor.

Maybe (thinking wistfully about college girls) I could've tried to hook up more, but I probably had enough drama with the experiences I did have.

Oh also, kind of wish I'd made more of an effort to befriend British students when I studied in the UK, instead of just hanging out with one of my classmates who was on the same program.

i've been avoiding this thread cause it's kind of full of psychological demons. it's comforting to know that my regrets (such as they are) seem pretty common.

i've had "i'm back in college and it's exhilarating yet i'm searching for a thing i can't quite find" dreams, even recently.

searching for a pair of pants?

we had a sexy guest lecturer one time and i regret not asing her out.

my scheme tutors lectures were a total joy tbh, always came out of them massively inspired.

"assing her out" no Keysy

Thinking back on university, it really is one of those places where you are better off regretting the things you have done than regretting the things you haven't done.

that's youth in general, really.

xp "...and if you see your Thesis Advisor this weekend, be sure to tell them
SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN SATAN"

I preface this by saying I think I did a lot of things right: I have no regrets whatsoever about studying modern languages, choosing Manchester and striking the right balance between fun and study.

I had a student radio show and wrote (occasionally, and for free CDs) for the paper. I wish I'd hung out with the other people who did those things. I had no idea of about networking - intentional or informal. I didn't really know how to translate that experience into situations that could possibly lead to job opportunities.

I wish I had known how to talk to people who were older than me.

I wish I'd realised that I was Actually Not Bad Looking. I disliked myself so much I felt little but contempt for anyone who fancied me.

Most of all, I wish I'd done a postgraduate degree. I had no idea of the range of PG qualifications available, or that you could do a taught postgrad (I've never really been one for research and I thought that was the only option). I also thought postgraduate study was not for the likes of me. My Dad was the only person in the family to have been to uni before me. He did his BA, then got a job and I thought that was just what was done. I really wish my university had done something to disabuse me of this notion; I remember one mention of a talk you could go to if you were thinking of doing a masters. I loved doing my undergraduate degree and would very happily have carried on for another year if I thought I could.

Actually, yes, I wish I had a bit more of a sense of postgraduate options when I was an undergraduate. But I did kind of feel like I had cost my parents enough money at that stage (this being when you had to pay fees in Irish universities) and instead of doing any kind of postgrad I would be better off sitting around at home being unemployed.

Though I did subsequently do a postgrad that set me on the road to where I am today.

I disliked myself so much I felt little but contempt for anyone who fancied me.

Any port in a storm was more my motto.

http://sickmouthy.com/2011/11/19/rites-of-passage/